Timeline of lighting technology

Lighting through the ages (legend)

The price of lighting through the ages

Artificial lighting technology began to be developed tens of thousands of years ago and continues to be refined in the present day.

Antiquity

• 125,000 BC Widespread control of fire by early humans. ^[1]
• 17,500 BC oldest documented lamp, utilizing animal fat as fuel ^[2]
• c. 4500 BC oil lamps
• c. 3000 BC candles are invented.
• 577 CE Use of matches in China. ^[3]

18th century

• 1780 Ami Argand invents the central draught fixed oil lamp.
• 1784 Argand adds glass chimney to central draught lamp.
• 1786 William Nicholson proposes use of concentric wicks. ^[4]
• 1792 William Murdoch begins experimenting with gas lighting and probably produced the first gas light in this year.
• 1800 French watchmaker Bertrand Guillaume Carcel  [ fr ] overcomes the disadvantages of the Argand-type lamps with his clockwork fed Carcel lamp.

19th century

• 1800–1809 Humphry Davy invents the arc lamp when using Voltaic piles (battery) for his electrolysis experiments.
• 1802- Vasily Vladimirovich Petrov developed the first persistent electric arc. ^[5]
• 1802 William Murdoch illuminates the exterior of the Soho Foundry with gas.
• 1805 Philips and Lee's Cotton Mill, Manchester was the first industrial factory to be fully lit by gas.
• 1809 Humphry Davy publicly demonstrates the first electric lamp over 10,000 lumens, at the Royal Society. ^[6]
• 1813 National Heat and Light Company formed by Frederick Albert Winsor.
• 1815 Humphry Davy invents the miner's safety lamp.
• 1823 Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner invents the Döbereiner's lamp.
• 1835 James Bowman Lindsay demonstrates a light bulb based electric lighting system to the citizens of Dundee.
• 1841 Arc-lighting is used as experimental public lighting in Paris.
• 1853 Ignacy Łukasiewicz invents the modern kerosene lamp.
• 1856 glassblower Heinrich Geissler confines the electric arc in a Geissler tube.
• 1867 Edmond Becquerel demonstrates the first fluorescent lamp. ^[7]
• 1874 Alexander Lodygin patents an incandescent light bulb.
• 1875 Henry Woodward patents an electric light bulb.
• 1876 Pavel Yablochkov invents the Yablochkov candle, the first practical carbon arc lamp, for public street lighting in Paris.
• 1879 (About Christmas time) Col. R. E. Crompton illuminated his home in Porchester Gardens, using a primary battery of Grove Cells, then a generator which was better. He gave special parties and illuminated his drawing room and dining room. Source: Practical Electrical Engineering, Newnes. Article entitled "The Development of Electric Lighting".
• 1879 Thomas Edison and Joseph Swan patent the carbon-thread incandescent lamp. It lasted 40 hours.
• 1880 Edison produced a 16-watt lightbulb that lasted 1500 hours.
• 1882 Introduction of large scale direct current based indoor incandescent lighting and lighting utility with Edison's first Pearl Street Station
• c. 1885 Incandescent gas mantle invented, revolutionises gas lighting.
• 1886 Great Barrington, Massachusetts demonstration project, a much more versatile (long-distance transmission) transformer based alternating current based indoor incandescent lighting system introduced by William Stanley, Jr. working for George Westinghouse. ^[8] Stanley lit 23 businesses along a 4000 feet length of main street stepping a 500 AC volt current at the street down to 100 volts to power incandescent lamps at each location. ^[9]
• 1893 GE introduces the first commercial fully enclosed carbon arc lamp. Sealed in glass globes, it lasts 100h and therefore 10 times longer than hitherto carbon arc lamps ^{[6] [10]}
• 1893 Nikola Tesla puts forward his ideas on high frequency and wireless electric lighting ^{[11] [12]} which included public demonstrations where he lit a Geissler tube wirelessly.
• 1894 Daniel McFarlan Moore creates the Moore tube, precursor of electric gas-discharge lamps.
• 1897 Walther Nernst invents and patents his incandescent lamp, based on solid state electrolytes.

20th century

• 1900 Frederick Baldwin patents a carbide lamp for use on bicycles. ^[13] The invention builds on acetylene lamps from the 1890s.
• 1901 Peter Cooper Hewitt creates the first commercial mercury-vapor lamp.
• 1904 Alexander Just and Franjo Hanaman invent the tungsten filament for incandescent lightbulbs.
• 1910 Georges Claude demonstrates neon lighting at the Paris Motor Show.
• 1912 Charles P. Steinmetz invents the metal-halide lamp. ^[14]
• 1913 Irving Langmuir discovers that inert gas could double the luminous efficacy of incandescent lightbulbs.
• 1917 Burnie Lee Benbow patents the coiled coil filament.
• 1920 Arthur Compton invents the sodium-vapor lamp. ^[15]
• 1921 Junichi Miura creates the first incandescent lightbulb to utilize a coiled coil filament.
• 1925 Marvin Pipkin invents the first internal frosted lightbulb.
• 1926 Edmund Germer patents the modern fluorescent lamp.
• 1927 Oleg Losev creates the first LED (light-emitting diode).
• 1953 Elmer Fridrich invents the halogen lamp. ^[16]
• 1953 André Bernanose and several colleagues observe electroluminescence in organic materials. ^{[17] [18]}
• 1960 Theodore H. Maiman creates the first laser.
• 1962 Nick Holonyak Jr. develops the first practical visible-spectrum (red) light-emitting diode.
• 1963 Kurt Schmidt invents the first high pressure sodium-vapor lamp. ^[19]
• 1972 M. George Craford invents the first yellow light-emitting diode.
• 1972 Herbert Paul Maruska and Jacques Pankove create the first violet light-emitting diode.
• 1981 Philips sells their first Compact Fluorescent Energy Saving Lamps, with integrated conventional ballast.
• 1981 Thorn Lighting Group exhibits the ceramic metal-halide lamp.
• 1985 Osram answers with the first electronic Energy Saving Lamps to be very successful. ^[6]
• 1987 Ching Wan Tang and Steven Van Slyke at Eastman Kodak create the first practical organic light-emitting diode (OLED).
• 1990 Michael Ury, Charles Wood, and several colleagues develop the sulfur lamp.
• 1991 Philips invents a fluorescent lightbulb that lasts 60,000 hours using magnetic induction.
• 1994 T5 lamps with cool tips are introduced to become the leading fluorescent lamps with up to 117 lm/W with good color rendering. These and almost all new fluorescent lamps are to be operated on electronic ballasts only. ^[6]
• 1994 The first commercial sulfur lamp is sold by Fusion Lighting.
• 1995 Shuji Nakamura at Nichia labs invents the first practical blue and with additional phosphor, white LED, starting an LED boom. ^[6]

21st century

• 2008 Ushio Lighting demonstrates the first LED filament. ^[20]
• 2011 Philips wins L Prize for LED screw-in lamp equivalent to 60 W incandescent A-lamp for general use.

References

1. "First Control of Fire by Human Beings—How Early?" . Retrieved 2007-11-12.
2. de Beaune, Sophie A.; White, Randall (1993). "Ice Age Lamps" . Scientific American. 268 (3): 108–113. Bibcode:1993SciAm.266c.108D. doi:10.1038/scientificamerican0393-108. ISSN   0036-8733. JSTOR   24941409.
3. Needham, Joseph (1 January 1962). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology; Part 1, Physics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 70–71. ISBN   978-0-521-05802-5. Archived from the original on 2 January 2014. sulphur matches were certainly sold in the markets of Hangchow when Marco Polo was there
4. Nicholson, William (May 1785). "The London Magazine, of May 1785". Hathi Trust. Retrieved 28 October 2024.
5. Guarnieri, M. (2015). "Switching the Light: From Chemical to Electrical" (PDF). IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine. 9 (3): 44–47. doi:10.1109/MIE.2015.2454038. hdl: 11577/3164116 . S2CID   2986686. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-02-14. Retrieved 2019-09-02.
6. Dr. Thomas Klett, Geschichte der Lichttechnik [History of Lighting]
7. "In The Beginning: 10 Inventors of the Incandescent Lightbulb". Txchnologist. Archived from the original on 2021-04-17. Retrieved 2025-05-06.
8. Great Barrington Historical Society, Great Barrington, Massachusetts
9. "Great Barrington Experiment". edisontechcenter.org. Retrieved 2025-05-06.
10. Bernard Gorowitz Ed., The General Electric Story
11. Carlson, W. Bernard (April 27, 2015). Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age. Princeton University Press. p. 132. ISBN   978-0691165615.
12. note: at St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla public demonstration called, "On Light and Other High-Frequency Phenomena", (Journal of the Franklin Institute, Volume 136 By Persifor Frazer, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Pa)
13. U.S. patent 656,874
14. "A brief history of high intensity discharge hid lighting". Shine Retrofits. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
15. "Sodium Lamp". Edison Center. Archived from the original on 20 September 2014. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
16. "20th Century Inventors: Tungsten Halogen Lamp". American History. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
17. Bernanose, A.; Comte, M.; Vouaux, P. (1953). "A new method of light emission by certain organic compounds". J. Chim. Phys. 50: 64. doi:10.1051/jcp/1953500064.
18. Bernanose, A.; Vouaux, P. (1953). "Organic electroluminescence type of emission". J. Chim. Phys. 50: 261. doi:10.1051/jcp/1953500261.
19. Schmidt, Kurt. "High pressure sodium vapor lamp". Google Patents. Retrieved 21 December 2017.
20. "The Next Generation of LED Filament Bulbs" . Retrieved 2025-05-10.